On Fri, 4 Dec 2009 17:48:00 +0100 Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> wrote: > On Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 04:04:04PM +0000, Neil Williams wrote: > > So it claims but that still doesn't make sense. Merely repeating the > > statement without supporting the assertion doesn't help. > > Well, reading your posts I understand there is in fact a > misunderstanding. The question mentioned in the reported wiki page has > nothing to do with a debconf question: is the question posed by dpkg > when there is a mismatch between an on-disk configuration file and the > old version of the maintainer configuration file. Try re-reading the > wiki page with that in mind to see if it makes a bit more sense (it > does to me at least). It is beginning to make some sense but the problems do not outweigh the (frankly wishlist) benefits so far outlined. If the package isn't buggy, it won't need a model; I think ::Model is just confusing. If it stays in leaf packages Priority: optional or extra, maybe. If it starts adding a perl dependency to packages included by a typical debootstrap, embedded systems are going to have problems. (Problems I need to fix.) > > 'Model' seems to be a completely misleading use of terminology. Why > > was it chosen? > > I believe the author is using the model term in the same it is used in > model-driven engineering [1]. *If* it is the case (I don't actually > know if it is, but with that assumption in mind the terminology makes > sense), a model is essentially an "abstract syntax tree"-like > representation of a specific configuration file. Furthermore, classes > of configuration file have a grammar in common (or "meta-model", in > MDE terminology). Like Model:View:Controller - I understand that. Still doesn't mean (to me at least) that any package needs this support unless it is already buggy. It isn't fixing the bug, particularly if the package is not already written in perl. > Right now, dpkg only knows about byte to byte equivalence among > different versions of the same configuration file. Hence I can be > adding a completely useless space to a conffile and dpkg will bother > me at the next upgrade, because it cannot distinguish among > "meaningless" and "meaningful" changes. True - but don't you think that by the time dpkg is handed this situation, the bug has already occurred because the file has been modified in an incompatible way and not by the user? -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ http://e-mail.is-not-s.ms/
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